College Magazine Project Evaluation

For this project, I have been asked to research the conventions of College Magazines and how College Magazines use and adapt these conventions to suit their own needs (i.e. attract their desired audiences) and then to make a front cover of a College Magazine and a mock-up of a contents page. Using the knowledge I have gained during the aforementioned research. I have been presenting my research, planning and designing in the form of an online blog which can be found at http://www.adam-amini-media.blogspot.com/ and which I have been adding to and actively updating throughout the course of the project.

I will now be writing about how I approached each stage of the project and how I feel it went and how I feel the final college magazine has turned out. I will then evaluate the project as a whole, stating what I feel went well and what I would change were I given the chance to undergo the project again.

I initially approached the task by listing the conventions of a College Magazine and how College Magazines use these conventions to serve their purpose (for example, evoke interest in their target audience). This was very useful as it allowed me to recognise the conventions even easier when it came down to analysing magazines, so when I finally began to make it, I could adapt them even easier to suit my own needs.

I then began to conduct research. I did this by looking at existing college magazine covers and contents pages and analysing them and how they use and adapt conventions to suit their own needs. I didn’t just looked at College Magazines, however and I also looked at magazines which were modern and which broke conventions to suit their needs (i.e. the Kerrang contents page which ordered the list of articles by category not page number. This made the contents page seem more interesting and dynamic and had I made a full contents page (and not just the mock-up) I would have used a similar method to this in my own article list.

By looking at other magazines aimed at people aged 16-19 years old, I was able to get an idea of how to use certain conventions (such as the masthead) in an advantageous manner. The reason I looked at magazines aimed at this age range is because they are the ages of most people who attend college and therefore the people who will consume the magazine, so it makes sense for research to be conducted on magazines aimed at the age group.

After research I made decisions on certain aspects of my magazine (such as the layout, content of the photographs and stories featured). A lot of these decisions were made to appeal to a young, gender-neutral audience (so both males and females). I then hand-drew draughts of the cover and contents page so that I could get a basic idea of what they will be like. These draughts were then the basis for my first IT draughts and finally, the finished Cover and Contents Page.

I took my own Medium Close-Up photographs (and more for the contents page (i.e. the photograph of books and a person using the laptop) and I then edited them as appropriate using the easy to use and accessible programme, Paint Shop Pro 9. When regarding editing, I mainly cropped the photographs to suit the needs of the magazine lay-out, but in the case of the picture of the laptop user, I also created feelings (in this case, the implication of stress) by using the Paint Shop Pro features of a ‘Zoom Blur’ and the ‘Hue’ of the image.

I used Paint Shop Pro 9 to make the final copies of the magazine as the software is both easy to use and the functions suited my purpose (i.e. editing photos, text placement, different fonts and text colours to name a few). I also could save the files as a .PSPImage so that I could resume editing at a later date, and then finally save the file as a .Jpeg which allowed it to be uploaded to the blog.

I am very please with the outcome of the Front Cover, as I believe I adapted conventions (such as the masthead, main photograph and cover lines,) to appeal to the target audience and put across the ideology of the magazine (‘Wyke Lyfe’ about the social life of students at Wyke College.) I am very pleased with the Masthead and I like the way that the text (red and black) and the font combine to give the masthead a strikingly appealing and modern appearance. I also believe that the breaks in the font which allow for some of the yellow background to be seen, give it the appearance of graffiti, which even further reflects the younger audience (and how they like to do things such as make graffiti to be ‘rebellious’.) I am also pleased with how the Main Cover Line appeals to the younger audience as whole, as many people in the age range of the magazine go to Nightclubs and the fact that it is about an ‘Under-18’s’ night allows even the people who are too young to go to nightclubs to be interested.

The contents page, while dynamic in terms of layout (if fully made the articles would be listed in a similar, non-ordered way as seen in the Kerrang Magazine,) in my opinion was too conventional in terms of layout. This is because it was very similar to most other normal, plain and boring magazines in the way that it has the normal title and a very conventional layout. If I were to undergo the project again I would most certainly make the contents page more dynamic and appropriate for a younger, more exciting audience.

Overall, I believe that the project went well; I managed to perform sufficient research and apply conventions to my magazine and adapt them in such a manner as to appeal to my target audience (moder styling and colours for example) and I also adapted them to suit the ideology of my magazine (the ‘Social Saviour’ as the selling line stated). I believe that I utilized different software (e.g. the Blogger software and Paint Shop Pro 9) in an efficient manner and was quite successful in completing the required task.

If I were to change anything about my final project I would probably adapt the conventions used in the contents page in a more modern and interesting manner (to appeal to my target audience) as I believe the contents page I produced is quite bland and not particularly appealing to people in the 16-18 age range.